Aside from Karen Hughes heading back home, has Bush turned over any of his crack squad of top-level advisors? Has any of the top eschelon said "My bad. I screwed up. I missed it. I failed my country." and resigned?

Lots of denials right after the fact, and lots of flag-waving when it came to bombing the crap out of a terror-and-drug haven on the ass-end of Pakistan. National Guard in the airports. The CEO of Argnanbright a free man with his neck intact. Not a single headline on the Anthrax scare beyond the New York anchors sqeualing thattheir mail wasn't safe anymore.

Sure, the FBI and Office of Homeland Security are making a big fuss about some new supersquad, but if they still have the same talent in place, it doesn't matter how you arrange them or organize them: they don't know how to think like the enemy so it can be denied or defeated. There are no magic Phil Jacksons of the FBI or CIA waiting in the wings to lead the few Michael Jordans they have left to assemble a winning team... they are playing expansion league ball and by setting up a new branch office or two they are spreading the smart ones even thinner.

Ariel Sharon handed them a folder of documentation on Arafat and his cronies. They sent him away, Abdullah's kisses still warm on their cheeks. and their tongues still sore from licking the boots of the "Clown Prince." If they can't recognize material that painfully bovious and act on it, then I seriously wonder about their capacity to act on USA terror attack clues.

Im not in the CIA and I knew to look out for any arab terrorists plots since 1993 with the first WTC bombing, then the US barracks bombing in the Gulf War in S.A., then the two embassy bombings in Africa, then the US cole bombing in Yemen, and all the other not-as-well-known unmentionables of American diplomat and citizen murders.

I definetely see this as a foulup of not following through on leads and properly organzing incoming intelligence.

At the same time I can clear envision a FBI homeland beaurocracy of 'passing the buck' and a general philosophy of not following through or being pro-active as opposed to most police work which is reactive and after-the-fact.

Understand one sad fact, most police work happens by eyewitnesses, informants, or confessions. Nothing would ever be known about any crime if it wasn't for anyone of those three things.

Political beaurocracies will always prefer to react then to prevent. That is why the people who have the most to lose, common citizens (or as terrorists call them 'soft-targets' (unarmed civilians)), are so vital in calling on and organziing their support. Old fashioned citizen watch dog groups, auxiliarly and militias are what will maintain the American Republic.

Bush shouldn't be afraid in asking citizens to form local groups and train them for preventative and policing measures in common local safeguarding techniques to seek out and report anomilies.

Theres my 2 cents now let me have 98 cents back please...

Cynthia McKinney must be grinning ear to ear. She's going to have a field day.

I was just getting used to not having seen anything about Michael Moore for nearly a month. This is going to tear it.

Charles:

Surely, you mean: "This really sucks. The conspiracy theorists were right".

I share your frustration, but all of the Monday morning quarterbacking being done now in gov't and the media still hasn't shown where anyone had enough info that they could have said, "Ground that flight, right there, before it takes off..."

Seems to me, that even the best warnings that we had would have been no better than the "red/yellow/whatever" alerts that we're getting now. In hindsight, we can always see where we dropped the ball. How about the pundits giving us the warnings from now on? When and where will the next terrorist strike be?

By the way, charles, this is my 1st post at LGF and I want to say that I really like your site. A truly useful list of links too! Keep up the great work.

Surely, you mean: "This really sucks. The conspiracy theorists were right".

No, the conspiracy theorists like McKinney claimed that Bush knew all the details of the hijackers' plan, and chose not to prevent the massacre in order to have an excuse to send troops into Afghanistan. (Because, you know, Afghanistan is just full of goodies, plus it's the first country alphabetically! Those uppity Pashtuns! It's totally worth a gaping hole in Manhattan!)

The not-altogether-shocking reality is that they had warnings that Osama & Co. were "up to something," but had no idea what it was, much less how to prevent it. This would seem to be fairly obvious. While the CIA and FBI are far from omniscient, they'd have to be thoroughly dense not to think that, after the first WTC attack, the Somalia attacks, the embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, and the suicide attack on the Cole, al-Qaeda would just stop and go home.

But then, if the FBI and CIA were that nil-witted, they'd be too busy sitting at home writing about spying Israeli art students and 4000 Jews playing hooky.

The situation then was not unlike the situation we're in now, actually: we know that al-Qaeda would love to carry out another atrocity, and we think they may already be working on it, or even have put a plan in motion. We just don't know the details.

But you're welcome to believe otherwise. Just please don't drive until the methamphetamines wear off, OK?

I second what Dave Colo said. Almost no one would have believed prior to 9/11 that commercial planes would be hijacked and used as weapons of destruction. No one had information as to the exact flights, dates, targets, etc. And who would expect the FAA to act appropiately and timely. That would take more than an Act of Congress. There were many things we should have picked up, but we didn't. The main focus should be whether things have really changed in order to prevent another such attact. My guess is that they haven't.

Kevin Shook, you're absolutely right.

Let's go even further: assume that the FBI had information on the exact date, time, flight number, and descriptions of suspects. So they raid all the planes, and arrest the 19 dirtbags.

...And then what? Not much, I imagine. Oh, CAIR and it's ilk would be having a fit, of course, complaining to everyone including George W. about profiling and unfair targeting of Arab-Americans. After all, just what did the FBI find? Some box cutters? Those aren't illegal on airplanes. Flight manuals? These men were all attending accredited flight schools, trying to achieve the American dream, etc. etc. So they had one-way tickets: is that a crime? Funeral shrouds? Are you honestly arresting these men for bringing white sheets onto a plane? Korans? So because these men are pious Muslims, you dare to assume...! And really, folks, come on: flying a Boeing into a skyscraper? You've been watching too many movies! Who would come up with something this complicated, when a truck bomb in a garage would do just as well?

And so on and so on. I'm sure at least half these men would have been released within a couple of days. Profiling would be discussed at length on CNN and PBS. Several specials would be made, with weeping, hijab-wearing photogenic young women, describing in perfect Midwestern English the ordeal of being singled out by airport security. American Airlines would issue an apology, and make a contribution to the Arab-American Anti-Defamation Society, with a promise of more "outreach efforts." Norman Mineta would be outraged! and put in all sorts of new restrictions designed specifically to avoid giving extra scrutiny to "people of Middle Eastern appearance." (hey! wait a second!) George W. would go on the record saying that "pro-filling" is "discriminatational" and against everything he holds dear. Clinton would tell a story of his Lebanese-American great-uncle who was once denied entry into the White House. Al Gore would talk about his years of service under Lawrence of Arabia. Pretty soon, the whole thing would be forgotten as another embarrasing example of the Latent Racism in American Society.

Until one day, another group of men board an airliner...

From the hindsight is always 20/20 dept.:

I had expected something like 9/11 to happen ever since I started hearing about Bin Laden and how rich he was and how he hated America and how he was behind the Cole bombing etc. Does that mean I am to blame?

Some perspective here: our leaders are not omniscient, despite the primitive part of our human brains that still tends to automatically lend someone in authority magical prophetic skills. I had heard the expectation that it was only a matter of time before some set of terrorists somewhere "got us" in a very big way -- the fact that we had nabbed McVeigh after the Oklahoma City bombing didn't reassure me at all that we had nipped in the bud all possibility of further damage from wackos. Feelings of "betrayal" are understandable but inapproriate -- despite the media's moanings about how "America was totally surprised" and how "we never expected this to happen" I doubt our lawmakers felt the same way, but like some of you have said, it was impossible to predict the exact time and the exact way the terrorists would do their deed. What they counted on most was the fact that we did not expect anyone taking over a passenger plane to be doing it for any other reason but for the reasons planes had been hijacked in the past. We just didn't know to what depths these fanatics would sink. We thought fanatical Muslims were no more dangerous than fundamentalist Christians (take that as you will). It never occurred to us that Islamofascism is more of a Jim Jones-type cult than anything, yet one that wants to destroy the world, not just itself.

The fact that the Bushies are owning to it suggests to me it's a total non-story. As others have said, the Bushies probably had warning of hundreds of things that didn't happen, as well.

Oh no! Does this mean that Cynthia McKinney was right all along?

Bush is confessing prior knowledge because he absolutely has to--it's inconceivable that he wouldn't have been briefed on a security risk of that magnitude.

Somebody, somewhere, will applaud Bush's admission--at which time, I'll commence to puking my guts out. The day we break into "For he's a jolly good fellow..." for a simple act of honesty, this democracy is about as worthy to brave the sea of domestic and international issues as the Titanic was to tango with glaciers.

Law enforcement is inherently and necessarily reactive. Our legal system effectively requires that there must first be a violation of the law, before our officers and agents are free to begin interfering with civil liberties and/or instigating potentially dire political reprocussions with the detention and interrogation of foreign visitors to this nation. Whereas, counter-terrorism, being the proactive arm of security, is fundamentally preemptive and necessarily covert.
Counter-terrorism and law enforcement are oil and water, where agency oversight is concerned.

The only "super squad" that could possibly be effective, would come from something like a domestic division of the CIA--not the FBI. Until that permeates our collective understanding, we'll do nothing more productive than throw vast amounts of money and energy into a swirling, sucking eddy of nada.

Jeff, good point. Apparantly the intel traffic skyrocketed just before 9/11 with reports of chatter between al-Qeuda operatives, plots and more plots, and plans and more plans. All a part of the distraction strategy that OBL used succesfully in the attacks on the embassies in Africa. So much noise that the signal gets lost to all not in on the primary plot.

What kills me is that the White House considered an imminent hijacking plot to be credible and did nothing at the airports, i.e., use INS data to detain as many visa-violators as possible. It's better than nothing!

Having said that, I must punture my own point: anyone who has worked in a large bureaucracy, private or public, knows that it is practically impossible.. and I mean damn near impossible.. to get anyone to do anything. Mineta could have given an order to do somthing, and the disgurntled underpaid rank & file would have laughed in derision.

George W. would go on the record saying that "pro-filling" is "discriminatational" and against everything he holds dear. Clinton would tell a story of his Lebanese-American great-uncle who was once denied entry into the White House. Al Gore would talk about his years of service under Lawrence of Arabia.

LOL You crack me up. Yeah, but that's how it would go down. Right down to that last dicriminationatal.

I like the take on the issue at rightwingnews.com Pretty much what everybody's saying, and with a little bit of sarcasm added for flavor.

(Damn that was funny...re: years of service under Lawrence of Arabia)

I'm less bothered by the fact that the administration apparently knew that something was up prior to 9/11 (but not exactly what) than I am by the fact that the administration still hasn't "connected the dots" and figured out that Saudi Arabia is NOT our friend. At this point in the game, President Bush should NOT be kissing up to Clown Prince Abdullah, any more than President Roosevelt should have kissed up to Nazi officials in 1940. The "axis of evil" starts in Saudi Arabia. It's not a coincidence that Osama Bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers were spawned in that venomous vipers' nest.

Re: Monday morning quarterbacking

Re: Monday morning quarterbacking, I remember hearing right after the Cole attack that there are hundreds of threats that are received by the various arms of our government. It would be impossible to thoroughly investigate each and every one with limited resources. Even assuming that most are eliminated, you could still be left with a staggering number to review, with more coming in all the time.

In an odd way I find it comforting that the security and intelligence services knew something was up. It means they weren't totally clueless....just lacking the imagination to connect the dots.

If we are lucky that lack of imagination was the result of institutional inertia and not simple sloth and incompetence.

We had more and better intelligence warnings of the attack on Pearl Harbor thant 9/11 and still screwed it up because we had a peacetime mindset.

Make no mistake, there is a over riding need to overhaul the three and four letter national security agencies for better homeland security. However, no "Homeland Security Agency" (There has to be a better name. I keep seeing B5's "Night Watch' and 'Ministry of Peace' when I hear that title.) is going to prevent another 9/11.

Killing the terrorists over seas plus wiping out terrorist supporting regimes and trans-national NGOs is the route to American security.

We either change America to a non-free society or we change the world so a Free America can be safe.

Enough is on a roll. Bravo again! Truly a man with great insight...and a good sarcastic sense of humor.

Jeff, good point. Apparantly the intel traffic skyrocketed just before 9/11 with reports of chatter between al-Qeuda operatives, plots and more plots, and plans and more plans. All a part of the distraction strategy that OBL used succesfully in the attacks on the embassies in Africa. So much noise that the signal gets lost to all not in on the primary plot.

Exactly -- and it's still happening.

Folks, a warning that OBL was planning hijackings isn't exactly forewarning of what happened on 9-11. We don't know how much detail there was in the warning.

This does explain why the US already had plans in place for the Taliban/al-Qaeda government of Afghanistan. I remember seeing reports that we already had some liasons in place before 9-11, and wondered why. Now, we know.

The big question is whether this so-called "news" will prompt the President to get serious about homeland security now. What will change at the airports, what will change at the INS? Very little, I suspect. Until the next attack.

BTW: Is Enough going to start a blog? I hope so.

Does anyone remember that the Official Policy about hijackings was (and had been since the PLO in the early 70s perfected the art), do NOTHING to resist the thugs and nobody will get hurt?

Trent Telenko brings up an excellent point about Pearl Harbor. Of course folks should have known something was up. They should have suspected that events were in motion that would affect them.

Well, they did know at Pearl Harbor---enough so that the planes were concentrated to prevent sabotage. So that folks were on the look-out for agents and saboteurs. What they didn't expect, of course, was waves of Zeros, Kates, and Vals.

And this, despite the British attack on Taranto Harbor the year before which crippled the Italian navy, using torpedoes modified to dive shallow, rather than deep.

So, yes, there were precedents here (Ramzi Yousef's plans to coordinate hijackings as an example). And there were counters put in place against what was considered most likely (all that security against your typical hijacker; training to let the hijacker take the plane while informing folks on the ground that the plane was taken; etc.).

Could folks have known better? In hindsight, probably, but here's a question for the reader: When the first plane hit the WTC, how many folks' first thought was "Oh G-d, what a horrible accident"? And how many's first thought was "It's a hijacking"?

For those interested in the vagaries of picking out the right message, Roberta Wohlstetter's "Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision" stands as one of the best analyses of how and why surprise occurs, despite all that you do.

I’m much more interested in seeing action now, than in playing a pointless blame game. I think we’ve gotten rather obsessed with assigning blame in this country, to the point where we sometimes try to do it in situations where there is no easily identifiable responsibility, or where the responsibility is spread among so many people that singling out one (or a few) is meaningless and unjust.

We should carefully investigate how our intelligence systems failed us, because they did fail. Catastrophically. But the investigation should focus on how to fix the problems, connect investigators better, set priorities, and analyze the data effectively, not on singling out people to put on a congressional hot seat.

Hank Bradley writes:

Does anyone remember that the Official Policy about hijackings was (and had been since the PLO in the early 70s perfected the art), do NOTHING to resist the thugs and nobody will get hurt?

Right. And that explains how our planes could be taken over so easily. But there were a lot of signs that something new was coming. For example, there were foiled plots in the Philippines and in France to crash airplanes into buildings.

And FBI agents were filing very specific warnings about Middle Eastern men in flight schools. Why go to flight school if you’re planning a traditional hijacking? One agent even mentioned the WTC specifically.

The simple fact here is that we were caught off guard. I’m just very concerned right now that, given the nature of bureaucracies, there has been more effort devoted to ass-covering than to putting our intelligence services on a war footing. I’m concerned that we still don’t get it.

I remember a very sarcastic and belligerant article that George Tenet wrote for the New York Post in response to a (not unfairly) scathing editorial directed at him and what the heck was his organization not doing.

Someone of his station shouldn't take an editorial so personally that he feels compelled to jump in the fray and bitterly defend himself. I know he's human, but he's got W. in his pocket, so why should he give a damn what the Post editorial page says? What does it say about the CIA chief if he loses his cool like that?

Not impressed at all. Made me wonder more and more if he's the wrong man.

I wouldn't fret about the Indymedia freaks having a field day with this. Their theories were always based more on the allegation that the FAA and NORAD "stood down" on 9/11, contravening their established standard operating procedures - which, of course, is a lie.

But I do hope that this will put the "It was all Clinton's fault" nonsense to rest. It certainly puts the GOP fundraising photo-op in a slightly different light, now doesn't it?

I've put an extended version of this rant on my own blog, but won't take up all that space here.

Somebody says there was no way of imagining commercial airliners being used as weapons. That's completely wrong.

The French did. In 1994. If they had shown the same lack of imagination our national security establishment has shown, there would be no Eiffel Tower today.

What could have been done?

Well, is it too much to ask for 24 hour patrols over the nation's capital at least?

And perhaps the nation's largest city? You know, the one with 3 nuclear reactors 25 miles away, and had been attacked once before?

This whole mess reminds me of "universal precautions" (popular nonsense found in health care). With universal precautions where health care workers act as though every patien MIGHT be a source of a communicable disease and therefore treat everyone the same way - to isolate those known or suspected to be infected would be 'discriminatory' (profiling?).

Just how should the president/government have responded to the intelligence that there was the POTENTIAL that some group MIGHT highjack airplanes? Discriminate against likely suspects?
Don't think so - we don't do that now after September 11th. There is no way that it would have been tolerated (never mind the multiculturalists, liberatarians and ACLU) prior to the event.

The plan to hijack airplanes and ram them into buildings was discovered in an al Queda cell in the Phillipines in 1995.

No one took the warning seriously.

For good reason at the time. It was not in America's interest to be in a war. It still isn't. We essentially refused to be a party to the war until forced. With this mindset you can see all the objections to prove it was impossible: 1. how do you get past airport security? 2. How do you get the typical thug hijacker to fly the plane? 3. Why would a qualified pilot making good money with the choicest women around want to kill himself?

Security lapses are rarely because of lack of information . They are because of mindset.

I am sure these days our enemies are shitting bricks. Our congress has added an amount greater than the increase the President called for to the President's wish list. If just 1/2 that gets turned into munitions think of being on the recieving end of twenty billion in precision guided high explosive.

In America 40 billion EXTRA defense spending is considered chump change.

What all this defence spending amounts to is that we have given up four months of economic growth to fight a world war.

According to our enemies due to total colapse of the financial markets we were going to be unable to support a long fight. It has not worked out that way. Weakened financially, demoralized by having to fight a war, we were going to sue for peace immediately.

And now the Palestinians are talking democracy. I'd say the tide has turned.

The plan to hijack airplanes and ram them into buildings was discovered in an al Queda cell in the Phillipines in 1995.

So much for putting an end to "It's all Clinton's fault." (It's not, of course, but he certainly shares some blame.) By the way, George Tenet was Clinton's CIA director as well. since 1997.

maybe i missed it, but no one here's mentioned that there were two warnings - one from the cia to bush about al queda hijacking planes, and anther from a phoenix fbi agent to fbi headquarters about suspicious middle eastern men in us flight schools. apparently no one put them together.

and to add to the evidence against the theory that no one could've predicted planes would be used as weapons: the attack in africa was a suicide bombing; the attack in yemen was a suicide bombing - see a pattern?

Charles writes:

I think we’ve gotten rather obsessed with assigning blame in this country

Yeah, well, whose fault is that?

:-)

Since this site seems to be run be a fairly proficient computer guy, I think this analogy makes sense. How come we keep on seeing break-ins on computer networks, even though we know there are hackers out there? Could it be that the hackers study the networks assumptions about security and attack the blindspots and weak points? As soon as a blindspot is exploited it is covered, but the damage is already done.

That is what the 9/11 boys did. If they hadn't exploited our assumption about hijackers wanting to live through the ordeal, they would have found some other way to get around security. Given OBL's level of patience, he might have been willing to wait long enough to get his boys placed on flight crews before pulling something off, and how do you defend against sleeper agents as pilots? Think Egypt Air times 19, or 20 if dumb-ass tried to learn how to takeoff and land. It would take more coordination than 9/11, which didn't that much in reality (any one that has passed 7th grade math could have done it), but it could have been done.

So, settle down Beavis! Knowing this time wouldn't have stopped them, just delayed them.

>> Almost no one would have believed prior to 9/11 that commercial planes would be hijacked and used as weapons of destruction.

Instapundit lists some of the many reasons why that's simply not true. Lots of people had thought about using planes, some had talked about hijacking them, and this wasn't a secret from the security establishment.

The Clancy angle is interesting. There have been suggestions that Clancy uses info from govt types in his writings. (He obviously likes them and says that at least some of them return the favor.) I wonder where he got the idea to crash an airliner into the Capitol building?

Whatever Israel's airline (I think it's called El Al) is doing works. I read somewhere that they have not had any terrorist incidents on any of their flights since the 1970s. If that is true, the FAA should copy what Israel is doing precisely, and if that means racial profiling, so be it.

Scroll down here for some good analysis on McKinney.

jeff sez:"and to add to the evidence against the theory that no one could've predicted planes would be used as weapons: the attack in africa was a suicide bombing; the attack in yemen was a suicide bombing - see a pattern?"

Uh, yeah. Bombings, not kamikaze missions. The authorities seem to have been relatively effective in keeping people from bringing explosives onto airplanes.

Whatever Israel's airline (I think it's called El Al) is doing works. I read somewhere that they have not had any terrorist incidents on any of their flights since the 1970s. If that is true, the FAA should copy what Israel is doing precisely, and if that means racial profiling, so be it.

The problem is that America has tens of thousands of flights daily and Israel has tens.

From what I understand, El Al security has what they call "circles", different types of people that are considered different levels of possible security threats. So, for example, an Israeli Jew is least suspect and least scrutinized. Men more than women. Young more than old etc.

They question very rapidly, repeat questions, guage expressions and use well trained people to do this, not the minimum wage slobs we've got. The question is, even putting aside the politics of profiling, will travelers really put up with extra hours the security requires (literally) to take a flight? And is it even possible to undertake such measures with so many daily flights in and out of and to the U.S.? Certainly the El Al methods need to be examined and as many as possible adopted. Hopefully the powers that be are doing that, but I'm not holding my breath.

I've had the El Al conversation before. Yes, they have not had any hijackings in eons. On the other hand, if you're in Israel, where are you going to drive to? You fly or stay home, and if you fly, you put up with whatever hassle the security demands of you.

Contrast this with North America. What percentage of the population even has a passport? Less than 20, IIRC. They're not going overseas. If flying to Disneyland is too big a hassle, they'll just load up the minivan and drive. Hard on the airlines, good for roahouses and motels. The fly vs drive break-even distance is getting larger all the time.

Post-9.11 Logan Int'l Airport in Boston (where two of the 9.11 planes where hijacked from) Hired an ex-EL AL security chief who has been there ever since and has been pushing for security profiling and meeting lots of poltiical resistance.

Suppose for a moment that the US knew precisely when and how the 9/11 attacks were going to happen. It would still be in the government's best interest to do nothing, or let a portion of it go on and make any reaction appear simply reactive.

Here's why:
- OBL was trained by a very good intelligence operation (CIA) in carrying out intelligence-type military operations. He would be well aware that capture of intelligence is vital to an opponent's security. He would therefore be trained to minimize interceptable traffic.
- There was prior knowledge of other OBL attacks. This was primarily gleaned from cell phone converstations. Actions or adminssions by the intel community after-the-fact revealed enough specifics that OBL could determine his most vulnerable communication methods.
- As a result of the above interceptions, OBL stopped using vulnerable comm methods. He nearly disappeared from intel screens.

So, let's supposed that prior knowledge. This knowledge would have come from a very sensitive source, be it human or electronic. Since the source would represent a vital link to tracking OBL and al-Qaida, it could not be compromised, as prior links were. Therefore, the simple act of reacting to the intel could have forced OBL to completely disappear from intel screens, but remain a threat. An enemy you can hear is always better than an enemy you can't find. An OBL/al-Qaida's desire to destroy the US has not stopped.

People used the word "unimaginable" a lot after the Sept. 11 attacks. I remember thinking that "unimaginable" was not really the right word. The pilot episode of the bad and short-lived TV show "The Lone Gunmen" had depicted someone trying to fly a plane into the WTC not long before, and I don't think it was even considered that novel a plot detail. Of course, maybe that was the problem: the whole thing lay in the realm of "X-Files"-spinoff conspiracy kitsch.

I still doubt that all the airport security stuff we're doing even now would accomplish much against suicidal terrorists, and I speak as a guy who had to remove his shoes and raise his arms for the wand twice today at the same airport.

What's changed for the better since Sept. 11 is that people are probably much more likely to fight back against a hijacker on the plane itself. (How likely, today as opposed to back when Reid tried to light his shoe, I'm not sure-- an attitude requiring a high level of public mindfulness will tend to fade over time. But it's probably still more likely than on Sept. 10.)

Sad to say, but that change in attitude would have been extremely difficult to accomplish prior to the attacks.

One key word about the El Al process in the terminal.

PROFILING

They do it, as noted above, and they haven't had a successful attack on their aircraft in decades.

Really, which is more important? Possibly hurt feelings or preventing another 3000 dead? Why is this even a question that has to be asked? Why has the answer we've been given completely counterintuitive? ("avoiding hurt feelings IS more important that preventing another 3000 dead.")

Every finger pointing at Bush (along with Bush's finger, too, I will admit) ought to be pointing back at itself. Every finger, that is, that was not raised to call for an all-out war on Al Qaeda in 1993 after the first effort to topple the WTC, such all-out war to include not merely better and more specific intelligence about Al Qaeda, but effective infiltration of Al Qaeda, deportation without the ACLU's knowledge of any and all Al Qaeda operatives in the U.S., executions of all identifiable Al Qaeda leaders anywhere in the world and sustained bombing of all known Al Qaeda terrorists camps. And that would have been phase one. ANYONE not fully on board with such a program by early 1994 has no moral weight whatsoever to be pointing any fingers now.

As for the thin gruel in the supposedly explosive memo that has all the talker talking, Tim Russert interviewe Dick Cheney on SEPTEMBER 15, 2001, during which interview Cheney summarized in detail exactly EVERY substantive matter about which many of you are now (or enjoy pretending to be) oh so shocked.

This is all old news. It's been hashed and rehashed repeatedly since 9/11 how we blew it. Blame the FBI, CIA, INS, ACLU, CAIR, etc. Blame us all for not caring enough about all the earlier attacks and deaths to get serious. Blame the press for not making more of an issue about Clinton's failure to react effectively.

After all the blaming, what good doe it do? We're still paralyzed by our own self-indulgent devotion to our precious rights and privileges. We still don't have any security at airports that anybody trusts.

We're like a boatload of partiers drifting towards the waterfall while we fight over who should be holding the tiller.

The only reason this is even being discussed is because it's an opportunity to dump on Bush. The Democrats need an issue. The photo story didn't have any traction, so everybody runs for this. But this ploy will fail because the Congress and the Clinton administration are even more guilty for failing to do more.

The truth is, we are all guilty. We should have demanded a declaration of war after the first WTC bombing, let alone all the attacks and deaths since then. We should be volunteering for national ID cards just to make the job easier for the people we pay to protect us. We should be doing everything we can to help catch the terrorists among us, instead of fretting over political correctness. We should be acting like people who care about their country and what it means to the world, instead of being apologetic and critical for all the blessings it has given us.

And right now, we should be denouncing this kind of cynical attempt to score political points from a failure to see what we all should have seen.

Even with all these bits and pieces of information that have floated into view, I still don't see where we could have guessed what Al Qaeda's operational plan would be, much less stop it. A memo from this government agency and another from that government bureau does not add up into a warning you can push off from to take effective action.

The whole rhubarb over these none too persuasive "warnings" strikes me something like the police receiving a threatening letter from a maniac constructed from pasted words from newspapers and magazines and some wacky aldermen claiming that the whole plan was there for the police to see, published in the open press.

It's pretty easy after the fact to cherry pick memos from the ocean of paper the federal bureaucracy generates to back up any crazy conspiracy theory you propose. If an asteroid hit New York City tomorrow, there would probably be memos from obscure government departments addressing the asteroid threat that would float into public view six months later, fueling the accusations of liberal demagogues that President Bush was warned of an asteroid attack, YET DID NOTHING!

The fact is that the suicide skyjackers of September 11 had nearly perfect operational and communications security. The bulk of the skyjackers, the goons, were brought in only a few weeks before they were deployed and did not know what flight they would take over until they were in the airport, according to the infamous tape of Osama Bin Laden. Only a handful of those involved in the attack knew what the targets would be, the pilots and their commanders. That's maybe half a dozen to a dozen people. If the majority of the terrorists themselves did not know what their target was it seems unreasonable to expect the FBI and CIA to know.

To this day, no documentation of the plan has been uncovered, only peripheral documentation of the tactics to be employed. There was no electronic communication that could be intercepted or retrieved. Atta and his pilots were obviously trained by professionals to stay away from the phone and computer when transmitting operational information. It appears that they carried out their instructions with perfect discipline.

The team was drawn from the covert world of radical Islamists. Most of the goons were related to each other. You can't penetrate such an organization. You have to be born into it. The pilots were drawn from the most pious of the Islamists. They are not going to suddenly lose their faith and start hanging with infidels and blabbing their plans. Money has no appeal for them. Even if they wanted to talk, they couldn't for fear of retribution against their families.

The cold fact is that America can not effectively defend against terror attacks by hoping to intercept them. There are too many soft targets and too many ways to attack them. Any small well-disciplined group can succeed in attacking America. The hot-blooded Democrat demagogues who are castigating Bush for not perfectly defending America against such attacks are far too foolish to see that a perfect defense is impossible. Somebody will always get through.

You can not defend America at the airports, by somehow playing defense better. You can only defend America by taking the war to the enemy, by attacking them in their homeland, by killing enough of them that they are compelled to cease. Ultimately, we need to attack the patrons of this aggression: Saudi Arabia and Iraq. They are the ultimate authors of this evil.

Steve Gregg

I found this link on OpinionJournal and thought; "I got to see this site, this comment is right on!" The Democrats are desperate for an issue to try and lower Bush's approval ratings. The Democrats are trying to make Bush and the Republicans look bad and it's going to backfire on them. If a proper investigation is done then questions must be asked about why Clinton did not take the offer of Osama Bin Ladens head on a silver platter!

The attack on the President is disgusting and counter productive. It likely will fail as a Democratic issue, and worst case discourage our allies and encourage the lunatics to attack us, knowing our alertness is likely worse due to the time spent on responding to nonsense, CYA'ing,-time spent away from analysis.

Until the administration is supported by Congress, or acts alone if need be,to profile suspects at airports and else where, information overload will continue to overwhelm intelligence agencies. The President should address the public re this, along with announcing a comprehensive plan to immediately overhaul intelligence agency operations, including personnel changes where necessary. The plan should be shared with Congress intelligence committees for comment/advice, and if leaked the President should go to the public and tell them the source.

More pressure should be put on allies for military and political support,and the public should be told this. And if they don't this info should get out to the public.In short, the President should mobilize public opinion to garner support and minimize cheap political attacks. He also should consider changing military commander Franks. Even if one assumes he is able, his public persona comes across as an airhead or good 'ole boy. This undercuts the war effort and confidence. At the very least, keep him off television. Out os space...!

There are credible threats on the President's desk reagarding Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Why aren't the dems throwing their support toward the lack of action that has been taken against these threats? Instead i have heard Dem after Dem looking for a "political solution" instead of buckling down to the heavy lifting. Sadam has enough bio and chem weapons to smoke half the east coast. Sept 11 will look like a walk in the park.

Could it be that Chris Matthew's kid is approaching draft age? No worry he can just cut and run to the peace corps like his old man did.

First time at this site, courtesy of Washington Post article. Mostly literate and erudite posters.
Can't help but agree with the poster who said that we are all to blame for failing to take appropriate follow up action after previous terror attacks. Problem is that we still are't doing it! What are we waiting for? If anyone poses a credible threat of bringing terrorism to this country, go, hunt him down, and eliminate the theat. Nike, folks. (Just do it).

Wilbur and Orville Wright should have seen this coming, the bastards.

Pre Sept 11 intelligence was like a 10000 piece jigsaw puzzle tossed out onto the table but no one had the picture on the box to go by. Sure, we knew the puzzle pieces added up to something bad but didn't even fathom the picture would like what it turned out to be. The current lynch mob is Monday morning quarterbacking to the n-th degree. They NOW know what the picture on the puzzle box looks like and are crying "it's so obvious". Sure. 20-20. Uh huh.

That guy (gal?) Enough must get his blog rolling. Must be the first time OpinionJournal and Washington Post cite in total not even a blog entry but a lowly comment.
Good job and get a blog man.

I think one of the easiest-to-dispute rationales for little or no action that the Administration is giving is Condi Rice saying this TYPE of attack was unimaginable. I would bet she stayed on the same U.S. Navy ship that Bush did for their meetings at the Genoa G8 summit after the airspace was closed and the antiaircraft artillery was deployed. Stories from the BBC and the LATimes confirm that Italy took these precautions because of Bin Laden planning a plane-as-missile attack into a buiding containing world leaders, especially targeting Bush. Reports I've found show she was in on the Bush-Putin mtg July 22, 2001 doing debriefing and maybe Q/A, so she lived through security measures designed for that scenario! No imagination needed...
That's 2 short weeks prior to the infamous Aug. 6 briefing- in terms of connecting potential dots, had she forgotton why she couldn't sleep in a hotel in Genoa??!!!! There's absolutely no way out of that one, unlike lame excuses about the Library of Congress doc being buried,etc. If only Russert or Lehrer could ask her how her statements don't jibe with what she had personally experienced in Italy....

If we say that no one could have connected the dots or, as Enough argues, it wouldn't matter anyway, we may as well surrender the notion of accountability in government. No one will take responsibility for ensuring no further mass destruction/mass casualties. I don't care to let the government off the hook for its primary responsibility of defending its people -- and internally sharing/communicating scraps of intelligence to a central, decision-making locus.
Let's give credit where it's due, BTW: At least one member of this administration connected enough dots to do something about airport security -- AG John Ashcroft went charter. Suddenly the scope of his overreaction and overreaching after Sept. 11 makes sense.

Did I read correctly that the F.B.I. says that John O'Neill received the Phoenix memo? That could be a classic ploy... making it look like the memo was responsibly forwarded up to a higher level, and the man isn't still alive to confirm/deny it.
Wow. I'm from Chicago, and if recently dead alderman had been behind half of the things they were conveniently accused of over the years....

I'm also wondering why if, as Mueller says
"There will be another terrorist attack. We will not be able to stop it", we (as a country) are blithely giving up so many civil rights to the Justice Dept.

The FBI, DEA, INS, CIA, etc. were too busy to investigate the alleged threat of Islamic terrorism, they had hundreds of agents tied up investigating Israeli backpackers disguised as starving artists going door to door.

with respect to Enough's comments of 5/15/2002 09:28PM PST:

he asks "then what", ok, what he forgot to mention as part of his "then what" is 3000 people continue to live and breath and work and love, multiple thousands more do not grieve nor have an irreplaceable hole (or holes) in their lives, the twin towers are still standing, the United States is not at war, along with it's own set of casualties etc etc.

There are much more things to say on the oddities resulting from the breifing of 6-Aug-01, but this is not the instance to get into them. I just wanted to remind Enough that he did not look at the most important results of his own hypothesis.

I got here via a link from Kurt's Media notes on Washingtonpost.com on 5-20.

Oh, yeah, Enough, on one other result of your thesis, the Pretzel boy is not at 70% popularity.

In 1996 Clinton asked Al Gore to study airline safety in regards to anti-terrorism. Gore produced the Gore Report on Airline Safety and presented his recommendations to the Republican House and Senate. Gore's recommendations included securing cockpit doors, placing air-marshals on flights and greatly increasing airport security. Unwilling to spend money (during a surplus year) and especially unwilling to give Clinton a victory, the Congress rejected these recommendations for pre-emptive action.

At the same time, Clinton asked for permission to track financial transactions by well-known terrorist groups overseas. This was rejected also; The most vocal critic being Senator Phil Graham (of course, now we can surmise that Graham wanted to protect bogus off-shore businesses created by Enron).

Clinton also asked for increased wiretapping capabilities and was rebuffed.

Imagine if Congress had implemented these plans. Secure cockpit doors, air-marshals on flights, and increased airport security could have prevented the attack on the WTC. Of course now that the tragedy has already occured, all of the above provisions are in place.